American Realism 1865-1890

Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude,"
realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although
strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular
kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life.
A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing
of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy
all affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh
Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal,
and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific
laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable
degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the
verifiable consequence" (A Handbook to Literature 428).

Many critics have suggested that there is no clear distinction between
realism and its related late nineteenth-century movement, naturalism.
As Donald Pizer notes in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion
to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London, the term "realism"
is difficult to define, in part because it is used differently in European
contexts than in American literature. Pizer suggests that "whatever was
being produced in fiction during the 1870s and 1880s that was new, interesting,
and roughly similar in a number of ways can be designated as realism,
and that an equally new, interesting, and roughly similar body of writing
produced at the turn of the century can be designated as
naturalism"
(5). Put rather too simplistically, one rough distinction made by critics
is that realism espousing a deterministic philosophy and focusing on the
lower classes is considered naturalism.

In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of
time from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which William
Dean Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others
wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of
American lives in various contexts. As the United States grew rapidly after
the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid
growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base
due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided
a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding
these rapid shifts in culture. In drawing attention to this connection,
Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the
threats of social change" (Social Construction of American Realism
ix).

The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in the twentieth
century. Howellsian realism fell into disfavor, however, as part of early
twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition." For an account
of these and other issues, see the
realism bibliography and essays by Pizer, Michael Anesko, Richard Lehan,
and Louis J. Budd, among others, in the Cambridge Guide to Realism and
Naturalism.